One of the central dilemmas in BioShock, the retro-themed first person shooter from 2K Games, is how to collect ADAM. ADAM is, essentially, currency allowing you to buy mutations for yourself. Everyone wants it, and it’s scarce.
Little Sisters roam around the BioShock world collecting ADAM with Big Daddy guardians. Now, you’re going to kill these Big Daddies, because you need ADAM from Little Sisters. But you get a choice in killing the Little Sisters for all of their ADAM immediately, or freeing them from their curse for less ADAM with a promise of rewards later.
Do good things really come to those who wait? I certainly could use the extra ADAM now that I’m a little ways into the game and I’m facing off with a gun-toting Big Daddy who just won’t die. Maybe I shouldn’t have saved the first couple of Little Sisters. But they’re little girls — you don’t just run around killing little girls, even if they are transformed into parasitic ADAM-drinking monstrosities, right?
BioShock includes plenty of rocket launching, incinerating, electrocuting, and myriad other ways of killing enemies, but at its heart, it’s sort of a morality play. The enemies you have no choice in killing are clearly insane and highly dangerous, whether that’s a wrench-wielding Splicer or a massive Big Daddy with a drill on his arm.
But the Little Sisters … that’s different. And is often the case in life, doing the right thing isn’t easy, because I’m now getting owned by a grenade launching Big Daddy who I could probably kill if I had more ADAM. It’s quite the moral quandary, and not what I expected from a game that bills itself as a shooter.
What would you do?
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Kill the little girls.
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[…] Even I stopped being a bitter asshole for a second and pondered how great the game really was. I think I was wrong. Now that I have returned to my embittered state, I ask: How can a game on a single track with choices that yield no real consequences get so much hype, even this long after its release? […]